Happy Bloomsday! and Word #1

Happy Bloomsday!

What is Bloomsday?  Why is it on the 16th June?  These are questions that I, having spent a minimal amount of time researching, discovered today.

Bloomsday is a celebration of James Joyce, and his most famous novel, Ulysses.

James Joyce - is it me or is he cross-eyed?

Why the 16th June?  That was the date of Joyce’s first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, when they walked to the Dublin village of Ringsend.  Although with a name like Nora Barnacle, one wonders whether it wasn’t a leisurely swim down the river rather than a walk.

And that’s all you need to know about Bloomsday.  Now go forth and celebrate!

What am I doing to celebrate this event, this highlight of the Gregorian calendar?  I pulled this from the shelf:

That says "Ulysses", for those of you who do not have superior vision capabilities

I flipped through it quickly, then promptly put it back on the shelf.  I have far too much to read to bother tackling the apparent monstrosity that Ulysses is at the moment.  But I think we can all agree that I did my part for Bloomsday.

I also finished reading Rock ‘n’ Roll by Tom Stoppard yesterday, and have to say that I wasn’t all that impressed.  It definitely pales in comparison to some of his more famous works, which gives one hope.  It’s good to know that supposed “geniuses of the modern theatre” get things wrong from time to time.  I do realise that reading a play is quite different from seeing it on the stage, but even so, Rock ‘n’ Roll seemed to fall short.  And I’m stopping there, because I’m not saying anything particularly intelligent about it at the moment.

This blog post is quite short, though, and so to fill up some space (the space left by my creativity that has packed up its bags and gone on holidays today), I decided to bring the audience’s attention to a wonderful new word that I discovered today; a word I discovered after a long and perilous trek through a forested wilderness known as the dictionary.  (There was no dictionary involved at all, actually, but it sounds nerdier/cooler/dangerous/awe-inspiring if I describe it as I did.)

The word?  Pandiculation.

Pandicu-what?  How dare you call my mother such a bad name!  Apologies, sir or madam, I didn’t mean to offend.

It actually refers to the action of “stretching and yawning” – it isn’t a stretch of the imagination to guess what I’ve been doing for a sizeable majority of my day today, is it?  Indeed I was considering how pandiculatory I was today as I pandiculated after seeing an actor on TV in the throes of his own personal pandiculations.  But this story of mine is a bit pandiculate-worthy, so I will cease telling it.

Happy Bloomsday again!

Word Limits

Write a post on word limits.  Please take no more than 400 words.  You are allowed to deviate.

I’m writing a 1500 word philosophy essay at the last minute tonight, and I’m over the word count.  Do I care?  Not particularly.  Word counts annoy me.  In an ideal world, the number of words you use should be the number of words you need – no more, no less.  If someone is stupid enough to submit an essay of 100 words, then that’s their own fault.  Darwin’s Natural Selection will weed out the academic gene pool.  Just like natural selection will weed out the stupid kids from the not-so-stupid ones – that is what roads outside of schools are for, to get rid of the dumb ones!  And yet our government makes us slow down to a crawl outside every school.

The bane of my existence

And yes, once I have kids, I’m sure I’ll feel differently – but then I’ll be biased.  Just like power corrupts even the most honest of us, so do children corrupt our evolutionary viewpoints.  And no, I’m not suggesting that everyone go around targeting school children with their large SUV’s (I would never suggest that – not online anyways…), but we did survive as a country without the ridiculous speed limits near schools – it wasn’t all that long ago they were introduced, if I recall – during my lifetime, so that’s within the last twenty years (even though I’m only ten and holding).

Natural Selection in action - if you don't like it, blame Darwin

But perhaps my irritation at having to slow down is unfounded.  Perhaps I should take a “chill pill” (I hear they’re all the rage with polar bears), take things down a few notches, loosen up a bit, not worry about getting wherever I’m going in the shortest amount of time possible.

There is a simple solution, that will allow me to travel through school zones at the speed I want, and for the children to be protected – run school at night.  What else have the kids got to do?  Stay up and watch the horrendous advertisements on TV late at night?  And with the kids gone, and the parents home from work, more fun can be had by all.  Think of the boost in the population.  Think of the boost in the economy (especially with this recession).  Think of the boost to the world!  I see no disadvantages here.

Now to finish my essay…